Regan Latimer

You’re best known for B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, but what were you making immediately before that?
Immediately before Fletcher, I did a short film called Harmony Love Matches For Life Inc.

Ok, so what brought you to eventually settle on series, and web series, as format, especially at the time at which you did it? Because YouTube was only just getting going…
What makes you think I settled on web series?
As you know, Ro, this project, the format of it was more a suggestion based on the contest that I entered. It’s not like I thought, I think I want to make a web series. I didn’t think that at all. I was literally perusing AfterEllen.com one day and they posted their contest for the next great lesbian web series and I thought, well, I can do that. So that’s what led to web series.

But web series at that time weren’t in any way what they are now. Web series was mostly vlogs – just someone sitting in front of a camera, usually reviewing something. I don’t know if you watched on AfterEllen – they had a variety of vlogs starring the AfterEllen folks, like Karman (Kregloe) and Bridget (McManus), and they were just looking to get into some narrative content, so they posted that contest, and I entered it that way.
But prior to that moment, I had not considered doing a series for the web.

Do you know what, that’s the first time I’ve actually thought of it that way. I’ve always just thought of it as, ‘Regan made a web series and I came along for the ride’ but it’s never dawned on me that that’s actually what you wrote specifically to fulfill the brief for that opportunity, as opposed to making a conscious decision to make a series.
Absolutely, it was never a thought in my mind until that contest came up and called it a ‘web series’. That opened the web as a medium for content to me, which I hadn’t considered before. I was in the realm of short film, or long form film; either way, it was film or tv, so really, it was their suggestion that led to my entry into the web series world.

So, before your accidental entry into web series world, when you were making your short films, did you have a plan for what you eventually wanted to do in film?
For me, it’s just about telling stories, regardless of the medium, be it short film, feature film, web series or tv. No matter what it is, the idea is to tell stories. So my other background is doing either corporate work or trailers or promotional videos, or short documentary videos – and it’s always about telling a story.

No matter how I looked at a project, it was basic storytelling. So to tell that through the medium of web series, well, it’s just another place that that lives.

You can go outside of the structure of tv but it doesn’t often work out. But on the web, you can do whatever the hell you want.

What was the impetus for you to go to that kind of school then? It’s a bias, because I’ve known you for so long, but I’ve always known you as being creative.
And I absolutely have always been creative. But for me, I didn’t think to go to school to work on the creative side of things. I felt like I already had enough there that what I wanted to go to school for was to learn how to make things on my own.

It was not a film programme where you would study films and directors; that didn’t interest me so much as I already knew the stories I wanted to tell. I just needed the skillset so I could do it myself and not have to rely on anyone else.

I know you come from a theatre family.
And maybe that’s why the creative side of me was always there. Even from a young age, being from a theatre family, my Dad had us auditioning – being in commercials, being in tv shows – and that was already such a big part of my life that I didn’t think to go to school for that.

Your Dad’s an actor, and I know you put in some time at his theatre company. Was theatre ever a medium that you considered getting into, as opposed to something on screen? Or did you consider them to be fairly interchangeable?
It’s all storytelling as far as that goes. I never wanted to be on stage or in front of the camera; I never wanted to act, even though I did that as a kid. But I was always interested in the technical side of things – even with theatre I was this close to going to Ryerson to do technical theatre and stage management.

Even still today, with theatre, I’m far more interested in the technical side and how it all comes together, as opposed to being up on the stage performing. But I do want to be the one to tell the stories, and I do want to be the one to make it and create them and actually do it.

I actually would still be interested in producing theatre. The same way I’m interested in producing a series. It all comes back to telling stories. There are so many different ways in which you can tell stories – whether you’re filming it or doing it live on a stage – and there are some very exciting things that you can do live on a stage as opposed to the experience people they get when they’re watching something like tv or film. It’s that producing aspect that I’ve always been interested in. So I would absolutely work in theatre. I would work in any medium in order to find the most interesting way to tell that story.

So it’s pretty safe to say that you were encouraged creatively?
Absolutely. By far. I didn’t come from a family that was all ‘go and get a real job’ that a lot of people come from. The idea of a career in the arts was always a viable one, and I was never discouraged from that.

What challenges have you faced?
I’ve always been a big proponent of – and you’ve had experience of this since our Fletcher days – well, if I don’t know how to do something, I’ll figure it out, how hard can it be? And I’ll just learn how to do it. I have yet to encounter a thing and thought, “No.” I’ll just figure it out and make it happen.

I think the great thing about the web is that it took away the need to get permission to do something. Short film is by far easier than a feature film to just go out and do it, but in the tv world, you are having to look for that funding. And you are having to go through certain routes and channels to make it happen.

But with the web you can literally pick up a camera and do whatever you want. So there is an absolute freedom in doing Fletcher that made me realize that you can just pick up a camera and do what you want, as long as you know what you’re doing, and that’s where my schooling came into play.

With so many new developments – from a business perspective, from a technology perspective, marketing, everything – that changes constantly around indie series, how do you stay on top of everything? How do you keep learning or evolving your processes so that you’re up to date? Or do you feel that pressure?
I don’t know that I would call it a pressure but it would certainly be a wise idea to be on top of things. I think the best way to stay on top of things is to watch a lot of content, read a lot of material on what people are doing and how they’re doing it. Also, to find out what shows have had via what methods.

A lot of creators out there are doing lots of different things, and that’s the easier path to finding out what works for them, especially in the age we’re in where it’s constantly changing. I think you have to stay on top of things or you’re going to be left behind.

How did you come up with Fletcher?
As I recall it, it was pretty rushed. It was an opportunity, they had a deadline, and it was very fast on trying to come up with a concept.

I asked Lindy (Zucker) if she wanted to do it with me, and she did. Just out of my own interest, I chose the character of a private detective, and then the whole story of Season 1 didn’t come about until after we won the contest. I really didn’t think at the time much beyond the three episodes that we needed for that contest.

So I basically came up with the character, the character traits, came up with a basic case for them to work through, and left the third episode on a cliff hanger. After we won the contest, I actually sat down and thought, well, these are the characters, what other characters do I want to have, where do I want this story to go, what are their arcs going to be etc. etc. And then I looked at the overall picture.

Even if you watch the series, you can see from those first three episodes over the course of the first ten episodes of S1, the characters are much more evolved than they were in the first three episodes to be a little more real with a little more depth to them.

With Fletcher, did you have a game plan for it at the time that you entered it e.g. did you think it was going to help your career?
Going into it initially, I was just focused on the contest and it was a very quick process. So no, I didn’t think about whether it could’ve been a tv show or could it be my calling card, or anything like that. That wasn’t at all at that point.

When we won and then got to do it, that’s when I sat down and seriously began to think about whether it could be a tv show: how seriously do we want to make it? How much story do we want to go into?

Because a lot of series out there do lack depth. It’s one idea that a creator has and one joke – they hit it and there’s nothing more there. With Fletcher, it was definitely more thought out and, as far as a concept goes it got to be something bigger than what it was originally thought out to be. At that point, I looked at it and thought, it could be a calling card for all those involved – not just me, but the actors as well, to show what we can do without any restrictions whatsoever.

It opened a lot of doors for me.
And for me too, and that’s been fantastic.

So, one thing I did learn with our development deal was the number of restrictions there are in tv when you’re trying to develop that, and the number of changes that consultants and other people wanted to make.

I get asked a lot about our tv development deal. Obviously, we made an announcement and we partnered with a media company – Matter of Fact Media – for development. What was that?
It was a very eye opening experience. We partnered with producer Vanessa Dylyn; she has a lot of experience in the business and industry that a lot of web series creators don’t have because they’re just out doing it themselves.

So what is a development deal?
She picked up the project, and I signed over my rights to her to create a pitch and proposal to shop to networks to turn it into a tv show.

And let’s be clear: there’s no money involved in this until it actually gets picked up by a network.
Right. Once you get broadcasters involved, that’s when the money comes.

Ok, because I think that was a lot of the misconception with this was that, especially as a lot of people were throwing around ‘development deal’ like we’d won the lottery or something.
There’s no money in development. There’s money in production. Development is just you trying to get it to production.

Vanessa was great. She brought on George F Walker, who is an award winning writer, very experienced, and amazing to work with. He mentored me through writing a pilot; it was basically taking the characters of Fletcher and re-doing it for tv.

It was great to already have two seasons of Fletcher out because I knew who these characters were and what was going on with them. And then he mentored me in creating the pilot script, which is what you send out with your pitch to broadcasters.

George was extremely positive; he’d seen the series and was fully behind it. The only thing he wanted me to add to it was to increase the stakes in the situations that these characters were in.

But then Vanessa brought other consultants in who would sit down with me and say, “Well, you need to change this character…” For example, one of the changes they wanted to make was to the role of Magnum, who was a man, to make that character far bigger than it ever was in the series simply because he was a man. That was my first moment of seeing the restrictions that you have and face in the industry and the tv world.

Broadcasters came back with not being able to make a show fly that has two female leads, let alone them being gay, so they wanted to change that aspect of it.

So many changes were being suggested that, had we made them in order to tailor it to what they broadcasters were asking, it would no longer have been B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye. Also, I would no longer have been able to pitch Fletcher after that because that new show would’ve been those characters – and the rights to those characters – which would’ve been all tied. So if I had made those changes, that’s the way they would’ve gone, and that would’ve been it. And what would be the point of that, honestly?

One of the great things about the web was getting to tell the stories you want to tell in the way you want to tell them, and the development deal was an eye opener into the industry of how that all works, and trying to make things fit into certain moulds and certain ideas of what the broadcasters think they need to have in order to sell a show.

But the development deal as a whole, though it didn’t result in a tv show for Fletcher, I learned so much during that process. It was very worthwhile for me.

We did get Out TV on board but they don’t have a lot of money, and certainly not enough money for us to make the show the way we wanted to make it for tv. The major broadcasters of course were mainstream and didn’t want the lesbian female leads for it, so I eventually said no, and got my rights back.

Then we made season 3 in order to finish it up. I always wanted to give it an ending because, in true Regan style, I ended Season 2 on a cliff hanger, so I wanted to wrap that up. And actually, even with the end of Season 3, I did three different endings, two of which were cliff hangers, and one that actually wrapped it up so that if we so desired to go on with it – I don’t necessarily, because I think the project is finished – but it left us options if we so desired.

We’re blessed with the fans that we have – in fact, I think we’re still blessed with the fans that we have – and they’ve been very vocal with their opinions, especially in the love story triangle. Was there anything that surprised you in terms of the interactions from the fans, or feedback from the fans?
It was all surprising at first, because I’d never worked on a project where the fans had such a direct connection with the work. And immediate. And direct to where they could just tweet you exactly what they thought, or write in the comments below the episode.

As far as fans wanting certain storylines to be, there’s a line that you tread carefully around your own creative vision and what story you want to tell, and listening to the audience that is supporting your show, and what they would like to see. And not necessarily to take those suggestions literally or to heart – because it still is your show.

But I do think that fans, and your audience, can tend to feel a sense of ownership over the show, especially if you’ve crowdfunded, regardless of whether or not that’s true, and can get very vocal about telling you what to do and how to do it.

So it’s both a blessing and a curse.
Absolutely. But one way or the other, it’s great to have them care that much about the content you’ve created that they are so vocal and want to have a say in which way the characters go.

Ultimately, though, it’s your creative vision, but keep in mind that you may lose some of your audience if you do things that are unpopular with them.

So Fletcher and Harmony have always been classified in an LGBT niche. Do you see yourself continuing to make stuff in that ‘niche’ or are you looking to mainstream this.
To me, these stories are not niche: they are just stories that I would like to see, stories that I would like to tell. The fact they’re considered niche is one of the reasons I want to tell them.

One of the things we did with Fletcher was, yes, they were both gay, but that’s not what our show was in any way about. It was a detective show; granted, she wasn’t a great detective, but that was still the main story, and it was about their friendship. There are a lot of shows where their being gay is the whole point of the show, which is not something I want to do.

To say that I make niche content – well, I guess it is but that’s just because there aren’t a lot of people telling these stories, and I wish that that were different.

I think also though that, with Fletcher, it was already put in the category because the other half of the partnership was with AfterEllen.
Yes, but at the same time, it was a perfect fit because these are the stories that I want to tell. So that just worked out.

I hate that it’s niche, and also in some ways that AfterEllen had to run this contest to try to fill a void of content for that market. So I’m happy to create content because there is such a void for it, but I do wish that it was more mainstream of its own accord. I don’t know that it ever will be because people still believe that that won’t sell, which is one of the problems that I ran into with the development deal.

Really? You genuinely don’t think that, even in this day and age now, with all the stuff that we have on Netflix, you don’t ever see a time where we’d have a show that wasn’t primarily for an LGBT audience that has lead LGBT characters?
Netflix isn’t a mainstream channel; it’s more like a cable channel akin to HBO or Showtime. I’m talking about, until it actually goes mainstream, and it’s no longer considered niche or until it’s not longer considered news that there’s a gay character in something – that’s the line at which I’m looking for the content to cross over. I don’t know that it ever will honestly.

And in this day and age, it’s easy to say that: you live in London and I live in Toronto, and as soon as I leave Toronto, I am well aware of the difference between a cosmopolitan city and, you know, everywhere else. Even in the States, it’s like, you’re in New York and that’s fine, but if you leave the city, even if you’re still in the same state, you’re looking at middle America, and it’s not as mainstream as we – you and I – might think that it is.

Even with Witch Like Me, we have Vanessa and Maiko’s characters – but our main character isn’t gay.

Yes, but with Witch, yes we do have characters who aren’t straight; but I always just look at these characters as, well, they’re just aspects of their personality. Although I do look at it with my producer’s head on and go, well, these are the niches that this would appeal to, and I would then, when the time comes, look at who our distribution partners would be etc., down the line. Because, as you know, it’s all in the packaging.
I think you’re right. With our main character, well, she’s a witch. And she has these people who come into her life to help her. They happen to be gay. But that’s not what the story is about. And to go with the main character not being gay, which is again harkening back to that development deal, which would hit mainstream audiences, and to bring in gay characters as the supporting roles – I think that’s the way to bring the two things together.

That’s just icky talking about it like that – the ‘niche’ and the ‘mainstream’ together. I’m like, no, it’s just media.
I agree with you. But that’s not the way that they industry looks at it. That’s world in which we live, Ro. Sorry.

What do you think the main challenges are for LGBTQ characters generally?
I think the main challenge is for them to actually be the main protagonist or one of the main characters; they’re usually relegated to supporting roles, and that in and of itself limits what writers can do with them.

I feel as if there has been a lot of death recently; the ones that immediately spring to mind are Kate in Last Tango In Halifax, and then of course Lexa in The 100. In both instances you could feel – and still do feel – the backlash online from the fans. If you kill off one half of a popular couple, it’s understandably going to make the fans very angry.
It’s an ongoing problem. It has historically always been a problem, literally from the first time you saw gay representation on tv. The reasoning may have changed, but originally [gay characters] were often there to teach a moral lesson, so they never got to have any kind of happy ending. Or they were just outright killed off in some way because it was teaching the moral that this lifestyle was wrong. Maybe not blatantly, but certainly subliminally.

Some people would argue that laws have changed now – for example, LGBTQ+ people can marry whomever they choose etc. Why do you think tv representations haven’t evolved: essentially, why are these characters still dying?
I think that, although laws may change, society needs to catch up with that change. And I think that, with regards to the way in which LGBTQ+ characters have been treated, there hasn’t really been that big a change in the television industry as far as the writers go: it’s still the same people telling the stories the way they’ve always been told.

One of the major issues, of course, is that these characters are always in supporting roles, or guest starring roles, so there’s always a limit to what the writer can do with them anyway. And those are usually the characters that get sacrificed for having stakes in a story, so it’s going to be something drastic. Does it need to be death? No. But, for the writer, that is almost like your penultimate story line. Their deaths often further the plotline of the main – often straight, male – character.

Until we can move LGBTQ+ characters into the main roles, where they won’t be so easily killed off and it not have that big an effect, then we’re going to keep seeing this trope.

With all of the backlash after Lexa dying on The 100, my fear is that it might have the reverse effect of showrunners and writers being scared away from having queer storylines because they don’t want that backlash at them. So I think it’ll be interesting to see what kind of balance is found moving forward.

There are other writers that would argue that, if a character is supposed to die as part of their arc, they’re supposed to die – regardless of whether or not they’re queer, straight, whatever. With this in mind, how do we effectively advocate for keeping characters alive, so that we’re not opening the door for token representation?
You have to look at what that representation is: it’s not worth it any more to just bring in a gay character just to be able to say, ‘hey, we have a gay character, we’re having representation on our show’. It’s how you treat that character. Oftentimes the queer characters are very two dimensional and don’t get much depth or complexity in them at all. They’re there to serve one purpose and it’s usually to advance the story of the main character, whatever relationship it is that they’re having with that character.

So I really think it’s important to move them out of these supporting roles. If you’re going to have representation, then have actual representation: don’t throw a few episodes at it and claim that you’re doing this great service.

So how do we make this change going forward?
Well, it was actually such an issue that it bothered me for years.

We’ve just been through a spring where there have been so many deaths of these characters – lesbian, queer, bi, gay – like, 25 deaths or so, give or take, and it has really just left the community reeling. When you only have so much representation and such a huge portion is killed off in the space of a few months, it really can impact you.

So that has led me to finally start a documentary I’ve been thinking about for years about queer representation on television. I’m finally getting my ass in gear to do it because the time for it certainly seems to be now.

Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Well, I’m about to go into production; of course, the documentary will show the history of it, and where it’s at now, and we’ll be talking to the fans about how it affects them. However, the main purpose of the documentary is also to educate industry members on what the problem is and what can be done to make a positive change.

I anticipate that it’s going to get a lot of interest from queer fans and creators, but I guess the challenge is going to be getting this out to everyone else, especially those that are in a position to affect commissioning. How are you going to make sure that the right people get to see this?
I am not making this documentary specifically for a queer audience; you’re right, a queer audience will be interested in it, but they already know about the problem. That wouldn’t really be very useful. The point of the documentary is to bring this ‘niche’ world and the ‘mainstream’ together, to hopefully use this as a tool to educate all sides, and hopefully, in doing so, integrate these stories so they’re no longer considered niche. It will be like a step by step guide towards making a positive change.

Historically, your work has been very comedic – Fletcher, Harmony etc. – so would I be right in saying that this feels like a bit of a departure for you?
Well, it is and it isn’t; yes, it is a documentary on what is quite a serious subject, but I will be doing it in a humourous, entertaining way. I think that, especially with this issue, if I approach it too seriously, [the mainstream] is not going to listen because it makes us sound like…

You’re ‘on your soapbox’?
Yes, and I have no desire to get on a soapbox. I think that, by doing it through humour, we’ll be able to find an audience outside of the queer community. People are more willing to listen if they’re having fun instead of being beat over the head with an issue.

We’ll be talking to industry people – showrunners, writers, actors – and the community, advocates – GLAAD, Trevor and other organisations that are doing work on the ground to make a difference. I’m actually really excited to get started!

Let’s end on something a little more positive. I totally feel like we’ve grown up as grown ups together, so what advice would you give to your 18 year old self?
I feel like I spent a long time waiting for someone to tell me that it was ok to create content of any kind, even just to create. I would probably tell my younger self to stop waiting for permission.

Also, always wear clean underwear. Because you never know.